Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Eric Vs. 365 - Day 164 - Madden NFL 20

Today's game is Madden NFL 20. Thanks to the wonders of EA Access, you can spend $5 a month to play new sports games until you get bored - which only takes about 1-2 games for us - so you don't have to waste $60 buying something that will be essentially worthless in a few months. Good deal! Andrew joins us for this episode. Keep reading for more and to watch the thrilling (lol) gameplay as Eric's Vikings take on Andrew's Packers.

Not much to say about Madden 20 itself. It's fine. It's football. Whatever. I'm glad I don't have to review sports games anymore. It was freaking torture. Moving on.

Over the years that Andrew and I have been friends - going on 20-years now - we have played a lot of video game football. It started back on the Dreamcast with NFL 2k and we've played dozens (hundreds sounds like way too much) of games since then in various 2k games, Madden, NCAA, and NFL Blitz. Almost always Vikings vs. Packers (or Idaho vs. Boise State in NCAA). 

Back in the early days, most of the games ended up pretty much like this Madden 20 match. I'd win by a million points and have a good ol' time. We'd laugh and joke and it was fun for everyone* (Disclaimer: It may not have been fun for Andrew). Then, as the years went on, the games got closer for some reason. I'd still usually win, but they got a lot closer and more exciting and I'd have to pull out some last second nonsense to win. I'd say those games were probably actually more fun, but certainly not as satisfying as the 2k days of winning by huge margins.


As for this video, I'm honestly not sure why it ended up this way. This was the first game of Madden 20 either of us had played, so it isn't as if I had some sort of advantage. Andrew just took way too long to get used to the passing mechanics and by then it was too late. I'm also doubly unsure why the tackling was so horrendous. Those long Dalvin Cook runs up the middle absolutely should not have happened. We were playing on Arcade Mode with rookie difficulty, but the poor tackling is still pretty unacceptable. Maybe this game just kinda sucks this year? I dunno.

My favorite part of the video is when I move my defensive back around and say I'm going to intercept Andrew's hail mary, and I actually did! It took a lucky bounce off of another defender, but I had to move my guy over to be in the right position to catch it. That's probably the first time I've ever actually done that.